Wednesday, June 29, 2011

i don't quite know, how to say, how i feel

i have officially been in korea for 4 months and 2 days. it's insane. my time here is going by so fast. there are days where i wake up and i feel like i just got here still, but it's been 4 months. oh man.

usually around the 4 or 5 month mark i have been informed that you start feeling hatred or anger toward the new country that you are in. i definitely felt that starting on monday.

monsoon season has started, which means RAIN RAIN RAIN. and humidity. and we all know how much i love the rain, yah i hate the rain. though i have come to appreciate oregon rain. it's clean and doesn't smell awful. and it's vertical, none of this horizontal rain. i have bought a larger umbrella and i still arrive at school completely drenched. thankfully my parents sent me my rain boots, so i have basically been living in them for the past week, and will continue to do so until this terrible season is over.

i was able to finally get into a good sleep habit for me, which is like 5-6 hours a night. i was also not waking up in the middle of the night like i usually do. sunday changed that. i couldn't go to sleep to save my life. i was up until after 2:30. and then woke up bright and early at 5:30 when my alarm went off. 3 hours. monday was the same.

tuesday i woke up in a bit of a better mood as it was sunny for the first time in a week. (and yes i might have done a little happy dance). tuesday night was "Team Thailand" planning and homemade
파 전 which is basically a pancake of some kind with vegetables and squid in it, or at least this one was. it was super good, but definitely didn't settle with my stomach as i was up most of the night in the bathroom. so 2 hours of sleep tuesday night.

this morning, i woke up in the worst mood ever. i was angry, it was pouring again, i didn't want to be in korea anymore, i wanted to be at home in my own bed. i didn't teach today, which meant i sat at my computer for 8+ hours working on summer camp stuff. didn't help my mood at all. it made me go crazy. and apparently say crazy things. i was so happy to see 4:40 and basically ran out of my office.

which brings me to the reason for this post. (thank you for listening to me rant).

red lights and stop signs in korea are just for decoration i swear. it is absolutely insane how many people run both of them. all over, even in school zones with students in the crosswalks. it's mostly taxis and buses, but there are the crazy other drivers out there as well.

so on my walk home, in the disgusting muggy weather, i get to one of the major roads and wait for the crosswalk to turn green. i am the only one there. it does and i get about halfway through the road and out of no where comes a care barreling down the road, fully intent on running the red light. i literally had to jump backwards in the crosswalk to get out of the drivers way. what does he do when he speeds through... honks. seriously?! *knock on wood* i am bound to get hit before i leave.

i don't know how many times i have been at a crosswalk and just watch the buses drive through the red lights like it's no big deal. it amazes me that i haven't seen more car accidents.

my goal tonight... sleep more than 4 hours.




1 comment:

Chip said...

I sympathize with you on many levels. More times than I'd like to admit, there were long nights of sleeping disturbed by the shooting urge to shit fire sauce. Damn those delicious dak bal! -- cooked in the orange tents of late night alley ways. Wish you the best. Cheers.